Cars

Classic & Vintage Cars

That's why they are classics

Classic cars share an important feature with period properties – they don’t make them any more. Supply is limited – permanently. As a result, vintage cars and houses alike retain their value.

Possession is temporary, however. You can own your car, and your home, for your entire life, and you may live a long time, but eventually your bucket will be kicked.

Classic cars usually downshift to new owners smoothly and uncontroversially, but as many of these cars are valuable, transfer of ownership often make headlines.

After Newcastle doctor Harold Carr died in 2009 aged 89, his rare and rarely-driven Bugatti was finally liberated from its garage. It was auctioned, resulting in one happy new owner and eight delighted nieces and nephews, Dr Carr's beneficiaries. They shared a windfall totalling £3m.

Karl Kleve bought cars obsessively but stored them in outdoor lots exposed to vandals and the weather - Cincinnati, Ohio weather. Hot humid summers and frigid winters did the already rusting hulks no favours. Many were fragile to begin with, and the outdoor life fairly finished them off.

One of Kleve's prized possessions, a Ferrari, not only survived but actually prospered. Luckily for the car and unfortunately for Kleve and, now, Kristi Kleve Lawson, his daughter-executor, it was stolen. The thieves were caught but the car made it to Belgium, where it was bought and restored by its new owner, former racing driver Jacques Swaters.

Jacques Swaters has the car, Kristi Lawson has the spare parts, and the courts are trying to sort it out.

Many classic and vintage cars come to market due to sad, even tragic, circumstances.

John O’Quinn was an exuberant Texas lawyer with a passion for cars and a wallet large enough to allow him to buy nearly 900 "museum quality" vehicles. O'Quinn also planned to store his cars in a museum he would create himself.

Fate had other ideas. Behind the wheel of an ordinary modern Chevrolet Suburban on a rainy day in Houston, Texas, a speeding O’Quinn lost control and skidded into a tree. He was killed, along with his passenger, who was one of his employees.

Instead of dying wealthy at a ripe old age, O'Quinn died suddenly, prematurely - he was 68 - and with parlous finances (including a lawsuit brought by the family of the employee killed in the car crash). His executors reluctantly sold some of his treasured vehicles, including a 1930 Duesenberg Model J Sport Berline ($1,7m) and a 1964 Pontiac Bonneville customized by "rodeo tailor" Nudie Cohn for Hank Williams Jr., ($225,000). (Full story currently being prepared.)

Also meeting an accidental death was Florida hotel heiress Bernice Novack. Three months later, her son, Ben Novack Jr, was murdered while on a business trip in New York State. His estate includes a Batmobile, one of the great many items of Batman memorabilia he amassed. (O'Quinn also owned a Batmobile, a 1966 replica with braking parachutes. It was sold at auction.)

Who will inherit Novack's estate, and who will end up with his cars? Novack, who had no children of his own, was survived by his wife Narcy and her adult daughter, his step-daughter. But his wife is a suspect in his murder, and Florida police are re-examining the circumstances surrounding his mother's death. UPDATE 2011 Bernice's death was changed from accident to homicide, and Narcy is on trial for her murder.

From New York rags to Hollywood riches, Tony Curtis, who died in September 2010 at the age of 85, owned several treasured motors, including a 1934 Rolls-Royce, a 1937 Bentley and a 1935 Duesenberg. For daily use, he drove a Lincoln Continental.

Duesenbergs are a particular passion of American talk-show host Jay Leno (www.jaylenosgarage.com). Paul Newman collected as well as drove racing cars, which were sold after his death in 2008.

Princess Diana's car was not a classic but its value was increased simply by virtue of her having owned it. What happened to it after her death in 1997?: "The princess's BMW was sent to a secret location to be destroyed so that no one could benefit from its provenance," wrote her butler, Paul Burrell, in his 2003 memoir, A Royal Duty.

Michael Oliver's warehouse in Knutsford, Cheshire contains two coaches once owned by Princess Diana along with Bentleys, Ferraris, Aston Martins, Rolls Royces, Fred Dibnah's steam engine and rarities such as a Leon Bollee and a Bugatti Veyron. Leon Bollee vehicles were introduced in the late 1800s and initial models, with three wheels, looked more like motorcycles than motorcars. The Bugatti Veyron is something else altogether, super-modern, super-fast, and super-expensive, with a price tag exceeding £1m.